Geraldine Huse: Inclusive Leader Award: Gender Champion

On Thursday 21st April at the Business in the Community Workplace Gender Equality Awards Geraldine Huse (VP, Sales, P&G ) was named Gender Champion in the Inclusive Leader Awards. In addition to this prestigious honour, Procter & Gamble was named as one of The Times Top 50 Employers for Women.

Geraldine Huse said: “I am thrilled, honoured and delighted to be recognised as a Gender Champion by the BITC. We’ve been able to deliver a culture and working environment at P&G that enables our talented males and females to develop and progress at equal rate.

It has been hard work and we have changed many things in our culture, work processes, talent management, career planning, team structures and leadership training to really step change inclusive leadership and raise awareness of our unconscious bias and how to mitigate this. We have also focussed on mentoring, reverse mentoring, sponsorship, role modelling and building understanding of individual differences in confidence and aspiration and how to manage this.

I’m proud to work for an organisation that has reached and sustained a 50/50 split at all levels of management including the executive level and continues to push diversity and inclusion initiatives across the business from recruitment to the board.

Commenting on these two acknowledgements for P&G as a leader in diversity and inclusion, Kathryn Nawrockyi, Gender Equality Director, Business in the Community, said:

“Geraldine is truly a pioneer in her field and has proven that creating workplaces that work for women contributes not only to a thriving culture but also to the overall success of a business. We are delighted to present this well-earned award to Geraldine Huse, Gender Champion, and that Procter & Gamble is listed as a top 50 employer for women.”

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About Procter & Gamble

P&G serves consumers around the world with one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Always®, Ambi Pur®, Ariel®, Fairy®, Febreze®, Gillette®, Head & Shoulders®, Lenor®, Olay®, Oral-B®, Pampers®, Pantene® and SK-II®. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide. Please visit www.pg.com/en_UK for the latest news and information about P&G and its brands in the UK & Ireland.

Extracto

As CEO and Chairman of the Board for P&G Central Europe, Geraldine is responsible for the Company’s business and operations in 9 markets and leads an organization with over 5500 people.

Since joining P&G in 1986, her career has spanned across various Sales, Marketing and General Management positions at P&G, including working as a Brand Manager on the Fabric & Home care category in Poland over 1996-1999. Since then, Geraldine has held a number of senior leadership roles covering many Global markets across Europe, Asia, IMEA and North America. Geraldine became Vice President in 2008, leading P&G Sales in UK & Ireland. Before taking over the responsibilities as CEO & Chairman of the Board of P&G in Central Europe, she held the position of Vice President Global Sales with responsibility for the account of one of the Company’s key customers in 12 countries.

Throughout her career in P&G, Geraldine has championed diversity and inclusion, pioneering efforts to address the gender balance in leadership roles in the Company and externally.
She is often quoted in media and speaks at industry and business conferences on gender diversity (PWC, E&Y, Institute of Directors, Amcham Europe), discussing the importance of supporting women in raising their opportunities, aspirations and success in the world of business. She is a member in the Queen’s Gallery Group set up by Buckingham Palace and the FTSE 100 Mentoring Foundation.. Geraldine has various recognitions for her achievements in creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, including the prestigious Inclusive Leader Award granted by Business in the Community in 2016. UK’s top trade magazine identified Geraldine as one of the top 100 influential women in business.

Outside of work, Geraldine conducts an active lifestyle. Her passion is firstly family and then sports including running (covered 4 marathons in London, Edinburgh and Rome), theatre and restaurants.

Geraldine is married and has 2 sons.

Experiencia

Geraldine took over as CEO and Chairman of the Board for P&G Central Europe in July 2016. She is responsible for P&G’s business and operations in 9 markets with 80 million consumers: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The Central European organization employs over 5500 people and, in addition to the Commercial Business Teams in each country, covers production sites manufacturing global brands such as Pampers, Gillette, Olay, Ariel, Always and Old Spice as well as regional and global centers of expertise: the Global Business Services servicing global IT and analytical needs and the European Planning Service Center driving demand and supply planning for total Europe.

During this assignment Geraldine was responsible for over $1,7billion business of P&G’s leadership brands such as Pampers, Gillette, H&S, Pantene, Ariel, Blend-a-med, Fairy, Lenor, Always and Olay in 12 countries including UK, China, India, Poland, Turkey and Malaysia. During this time Geraldine also successfully led Global Diversity for P&G – achieving a 50% growth in the number of female executives. Externally she was voted Chairman of the IGD and vice Chairman of Grocery Aid having served on the Board of both organizations for several years,

Geraldine led a $4billion business across UK and Ireland with 4 years of consistent Sales growth in this tough market place. As part of her lead role in driving European Diversity and Inclusion role she also led the way in taking her team to 50:50 males:females at all levels of management

During Geraldine’s leadership, P&G in Western Europe step changed their approach to customer management by introducing much more flexibility, agility and differentiation into the Go to Market strategies and approaches. This significantly enhanced P&Gs ratings with customers (Advantage survey scores) and enabled some strong growth indices that had not been seen before.

In this period Geraldine assumed various roles in various markets – from Brand Manager in Poland to Associate Director working on a range of categories such as Beauty Care, Skin Care & Cosmetics, Fabric Care.